The Director of Finance presented information, in tabular format, in relation to the costs and sources of funding of the Early Voluntary Retirement/Voluntary Severance (EVR/VS) Scheme. He provided details of the use of capitalisation, which was the relaxation of a normal accounting requirement, by the Secretary of State, which permitted specified items of expenditure that would normally be classified as revenue expenditure to be treated as capital expenditure. It provided financial flexibility for the management of one-off unexpected costs and the Director indicated that, in response to an application for a capitalisation direction for statutory redundancy payments, the DCLG had advised that Wirral could capitalise up to £3,420,000 in 2010/2011. A further £200m would be available for capitalisation in 2011/2012 but the DCLG had yet to announce the bidding process or timetable.

The Director reported that an alternate source of funding was the use of revenue and balances and he indicated that those officers that had left the Council before 31 March 2011 would realise a part year saving in the financial year 2010/2011 of £1.9m, which could be used to offset the cost of implementing the scheme. No pay award had been offered for 2010/2011, but an amount of £1.4m was included within the original Estimates for 2010/2011 in respect of a pay award from April 2010. That sum had been removed from departmental budgets and returned to the General Balance in order to partially meet the cost of the Scheme. He commented that the Efficiency Investment Budget was available to support initiatives approved by the Cabinet, which would lead to the delivery of future efficiencies and would be used to meet the full costs of any restructuring and retraining requirements that had been identified by each Chief Officer. The funding would be released on the confirmation of an appropriate business case by the Strategic Change Programme Board.

He reported that the minimum recommended level of General Fund balances for 2010/2011 was £6.5m and the latest position showed projected balances at 31 March 2011 of £14m, after the use of £2.6m. An additional £4.4m was projected to be used from balances in 2011/2012.

It was moved by Councillor P Davies and seconded by Councillor A Jones –

“(1) That Committee believes that the previous terms and conditions which applied to EVR/VS applications should be re-instated and the Cabinet be requested to undertake a full review of the way in which applications for EVR/VS were invited.

(2) That this Committee does not believe that it is appropriate to ask employees to take serious decisions about their future in a “last chance saloon” climate of fear, where pressure is applied to persuade people to go by telling them that any future settlements will be considerably reduced, and that a failure to reach the required number of EVRs or Voluntary Severance requests would lead to compulsory redundancies.

(3) That this Committee asks for the report of the Director of Finance to be referred to the Employment and Appointments Committee to re-instate immediately the previous terms and conditions which applied to EVR/VS applications for any future applicants, pending the review”.

It was moved as an amendment by Councillor J Keeley and seconded by Councillor D McCubbin –

“That the report be noted”.

The amendment was put and carried (6:4)

The amendment, then becoming the substantive motion was put and carried.

Resolved (6:4) (Councillors P Davies, D Dodd, A Jones and J Stapleton voting against) – That the report be noted.